Jean Genie, Aladdin Sane, Marc Bolan and T. Rex, Duffy (the photographer), Gary Glitter, the not-long-for-this-world Howard Hughes, Times Square, Radio City Valentine’s Day, Dali, a soon-to-be American idol, Veruschka, (Sir) Cliff, Olivia Newton-John, Los Angeles, Iggy, Rodney Bingenheimer, Japan, the Trans-Siberian Railway, Moscow… heavens to Betsy! I feel faint. Please pass me my fan and smelling salts. We’re only up to page 50 in Simon Goddard’s Bowie Odyssey 73, a decadent book on the life and times of David Bowie, and there’s so much rampant name- and placedropping that my false eyelashes are batting a mile a minute. This is how it should be! The more the merrier.

His narrative non-fusty, swift re-telling continues with Bowie Odyssey 73, fourth in a series of 10, and there’s the thrill of a You Are There feeling with this well-researched book, where even the weather is correct on the day. Goddard does briefly address the hebephilia and ephebophilia that went on – and still does – in music, and nails adolescent frenzy. Quotes gathered from autobios, newspapers and such keep things pithy; the UK scene, complete with clothes, food, music, film, TV and even political scandals, is precisely described.

As an on-the-cusp teen, I fondly remember Leee Black Childers from the equally outrageous Creem magazine, and watching Bowie on The Midnight Special, wide-eyed. The death of Ziggy, Angie, rock’n’roll royalty, the Cherrys (Ava and Vanilla), the indispensable Corrine – and more: all here.